Martin Scicluna’s article on ‘Religion and the Embryo’ (November 18) insults the intelligence of his readers not only because it is fraught with contradictions and inaccuracies but also because it is based on an argument that is both false in its premises as well as internally incoherent. It is very easy for any clearheaded reader to detect its laughable logic.

Let me paraphrase it and briefly explain its implicit assumptions. Religion is by nature irrational. Religion is by definition a wholly private matter. For these reasons, it should be kept “out of society”.

Ironically he cites Pope Benedict XVI who more than anyone else has striven to alert us to the disastrous consequences brought about by the “tyranny of a liberal democratic state” or the “dictatorship of relativism”. Intelligent readers who are familiar with the dazzling thought of that sorely missed mind know exactly what he meant. Ratzinger’s celebrated debates with Jürgen Habermas or his critique of Hans Kelsen on this matter are a force to be reckoned with. Sadly we can only afford a sniff at that conversation since a fuller appraisal is a luxury we cannot afford here.

My task here is infinitely more modest though equally upsetting. Are claims to some truth made by individuals or groups inimical to the exercise of real freedom in a modern democracy?

We do not need to settle for an ‘agree to disagree’ situation. That position is one of the pathetic outcomes of a particular version of liberalism

Paraphrasing on his behalf, Scicluna’s answer would be, well, that depends on who would be uttering such truths. That is, if such truths were put forward by Malta’s “secular, liberal, parliamentary democracy”, then yes, such truths are even to be granted the legislative scaffolding they deserve. If, on the other hand, such truths bore any minimal resemblance to religious opinion – even if rationally argued – then, “traditional religious beliefs should play no part in debates which are essentially for society to decide”.

For religion to “stay out of society” as Scicluna proposes, which other asocial ghettos, camps or culturally alienated territory for such dull conservatives might, perhaps, be offered by our liberal state, might I ask?

Please note that I have not even mentioned the embryo, as yet. In fact not much debate is required to establish that human embryos deserve unconditional protection as far as is responsibly possible. Why? The correct answer is that they are innocent and defenceless human beings.

However it is important to acknowledge this hidden target as Scicluna’s real political objective. If it isn’t then his line of argument is more short-sighted than we thought. Do not let the rhetoric shroud it for you. Of course it would be theoretically misleading to conceptually lump embryo freezing with abortion procedures as they are ‘normally’ understood.

They might as well involve quite different processes. The discarding or utilisation or manipulation of unwanted or unneeded embryos – when other methods like oocyte vitrification are in fact available – would get us uncomfortably close, nonetheless.

Back to the thread. It is astounding how Scicluna sweeps away two millennia of philosophical, scientific and theological debate enkindled and supported by Christianity in Europe while pathetically referring us to Constantine and to the Enlightenment as the only relevant markers that watershed and bracket the history of Europe right up to modernity.

Similarly it is unbelievable how the only examples of religious initiatives he cites rely on references to widespread fanaticism. Too much of Dawkins there, I’m afraid. And, as one eminent Cambridge molecular geneticist recently told me: “Dawkins is bad news for science.” Bad news for science, please note, notfor religion.

In fact it is not my concern to waste any space defending the Church for its longstanding contribution to society, locally or universally in past centuries. Those who have benefitted from it are far too numerous. The worrying shadows cast by the sins of the ‘all too human’ institution that it is also paradoxically, coexist with the bright light of the heroic love that it is called to represent and continue to serve.

Scicluna’s position is an offensive nonstarter because he misses a fundamental feature of democratic society, namely that all its members – even Fr Robert Soler SJ – are happy and free citizens. Some of them are even intelligent. And no, we do not need to settle for an “agree to disagree” situation. That position is one of the pathetic outcomes of a particular version of liberalism that, in its resignation, has very conveniently given up the search for truth. Why should we be forced to accept that?

Moreover it is misleading to suggest that Fr Soler omitted the indispensable information from embryology since half of his brief comment was an important rehearsal of the biological distinction in status to be made between gametes and zygotes, let alone embryos.

There are very good reasons to keep religion in and not out of society. Now that is very different from trying to impose a supernatural or theistic claim on the rest of the social community. Nevertheless, arbitrarily cordoning off the inexhaustible conceptual richness it continues to offer to law, ethics and education would transform our society into an amputated ghost desperately clutching at its incongruent desires.

That would be a travesty of the society we want to live in where we all have the right to voice our intelligently argued opinions. Even if such arguments were remotely inspired by a religious outlook that does not make them in principle inaccessible to rational and public scrutiny. In other words, they ought not to be dismissed as “merely private”.

For even to contemplate a ban on such a possibility – as Scicluna suggests we do – would be inimical to freedom itself. That is a terrifying prospect indeed.

Christopher Caruana is a tutor in philosophy, King’s College London and member of the Inter-Diocesan Theological Commission of the Archdiocese of Malta.